Asymmetric Extradition - The American Way

I blame my partner. There I was having a perfectly nice day off, pootling my way through the Sunday newspapers and finding such intriguing articles as the fact that Britain has invaded all but 22 countries around the world over the centuries (France is the second most prolific invader but also has the dubious distinction of being the country most invaded by Britain, apparently).

Then he has to go and say "well, if the US ignores other country's laws, why should we be subject to theirs?". The following is the unavoidable result.

I had made the tactical blunder of sharing two articles with him. The first was an excellent interview in the Independent with news supremo and financial subversive, Max Keiser; the second was an article I found in my Twitter stream from the indefatigable Julia O'Dwyer about her son's ongoing legal fight in the UK.

The connection? Unfortunately and rather inevitably these days - extradition.

Richard O'Dwyer is the Sheffield student who is currently wanted by the USA on copyright infringement charges. Using a bit of old-fashioned get-up-and-go, he set up a website called tvshack.com, which apparently acted as a sign-posting service to websites where people could download media. Putting aside the simple argument that the service he provided was no different from Google, he also had no copyrighted material hosted on his website.

Richard has lived all his life in the UK, and he set up his website there. Under UK law he had committed no crime.

However, the American authorities thought differently. O'Dwyer had registered his website as a .com and the US now claims that any website, anywhere in the world, using a US-originated domain name (com/org/info/net etc) is subject to US law, thus allowing the American government to globalise their legal hegemony. The most notorious recent case was the illegal US intelligence operation to take down Megaupload and arrest Kim Dotcom in New Zealand earlier this year.

This has already resulted in foreign websites that attract the wrath of the US authorities being taken down, with no warning and no due process. This is the cyber equivalent of drone warfare and the presidentially-approved CIA kill list.

As a result, not only was O'Dwyer's website summarily taken down, he is now facing extradition to the US and a 10 year stretch in a maximum security prison. All for something that is not even a crime under UK law. His case echoes the terrible 10-year ordeal that Gary McKinnon went through, and highlights the appalling problems inherent in the invidious, one-sided UK/USA Extradition Act.

So how does this link to the Max Keiser interview? Reading it reminded me of an investigation Keiser did a few years ago into the extraordinary rendition of a "terrorist suspect", Abu Omar, from Italy to Egypt where he was inevitably, horrifically tortured. Since then, 23 CIA officers have now been tried under Italian law and found guilty of his kidnapping (let's not mince our words here). The Milan Head of Station, Robert Lady is now wanted in Italy to serve his nine-year sentence, but the US government has refused to extradite him.

So let's just reiterate this: on the one hand, the US demands EU citizens on suspicion that they may have committed a cyber-crime according to the diktats of American law, which we are all now supposed to agree has a globalised reach; on the other hand, US citizens who have already been convicted by the due legal process of other Western democracies are not handed over to serve their sentences for appalling crimes involving kidnapping and torture.

I have written at length about America's asymmetric extradition laws, but this is taking the system to new heights of hypocrisy.

Just why, indeed, should European countries religiously obey America's self-styled global legal dominion and hand over its citizens, presumed innocent until proven guilty, to the brutal and disproportionate US legal system? Especially when the US brushes aside the due legal processes of other democracies and refuses to extradite convicted felons?

It appears that the USA is in a hurry to reach and breach Britain's record for foreign invasions. But in addition to old-fashioned military incursions, America is also going for full-spectrum legal dominance.